Often individuals or companies desire to have documents professionally reproduced. The vast majority of individuals and companies do not have the facilities to generate large or professional quality reproductions of documents. Thus, large print jobs have been dropped off at a professional print shop or commercial service bureau, such as Kinko's, Ikon or the like. More particularly, in the past, if a user had generated a document such as a report in a word processing application and desired professional print copies in bulk, they would either download the document onto a disk or print the document locally at their home or office and have the document and/or disk delivered to the commercial service bureau for further handling.
Delivering the documents to the commercial service bureau required a trip to the service bureau's location, which in many cases required time, travel costs and inconvenience and added a layer of delay in obtaining the documents back from the service bureau. In a corporate environment, the person delivering the print job to the service bureau was typically not the person who requested the job. Thus, an intermediary, not very familiar with the job requirements, often had to deliver special instructions for the job. This creates a significant risk for error, further delaying the time of completion of the desired print job from the service bureau.
Kinko's has developed a software package to address many of these shortcomings. The software package, referred to as KinkonetSM, allows a user to send documents digitally from their work station to one or several KinkonetSM print shops, where the document will be produced and delivered according to the user's specifications. The KinkonetSM software is a standalone package useable with Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh. Thus, the KinkonetSM software is a program group which the user installs on their machine and is then locatable in the user's program manager.
The first time KinkonetSM is run the user provides personal information about her location, billing preferences, contact information, and a remote destination for the print job. When a user wants to route a print job to Kinko's, she must open the KinkonetSM application and create an order which includes identifying the specifications of the order. Also, the user can modify their customer profile and the desired destination.
The order is created in what is referred to as an electronic job ticket. When the electronic ticket has been completed by the user, the user must attach the relevant file(s) to the ticket. To attach the files, the user must go back through their directory to find the file in its drive and directory and/or folder in which it is located. Also, the user must identify the source of the application, e.g., MS Word™, MS Excel™, etc. If the application is not supported by KinkonetSM, the user must save their file in a standard format called PostScript, that is recognized by a variety of applications. However, each application performs this task differently and the user must know or figure out how to create such a postscript file.
When the user has completed the necessary forms and attached their file, they activate a send job button. In response, KinkonetSM software initializes a modem coupled to the user's terminal and dials out to KinkonetSM over the phone line. The status of the transmission appears at the bottom of the screen and a confirmation dialog box will appear once the document has been transferred via the telephone modem to Kinko's.
There are several disadvantages associated with the KinkonetSM method of sending documents to a service bureau for printing. For example, a user must obtain a copy of the KinkonetSM software package before even routing a print job to Kinko's. Also, every time Kinko's adds a new feature or capability, the user will not know of the new feature or capability and the KinkonetSM software will not support the same. To have access to new features and capabilities, the KinkonetSM software would have to be constantly updated to include new features and capabilities. Also, with KinkonetSM, the user may have to navigate through a number of dialog boxes prior to retrieving the desired file(s) for the print job. The inattentive or unsophisticated user may forget the location of the file. Further, if the file requiring a print job is in an application not supported by KinkonetSM, the user must refer to a manual for the specific set up requirements to attach the job to the print order. Thus, there is a need in the art to provide an improved user friendly, simplistic methodology for submitting a print job to a service bureau.